


Trust Fall

by kyanve



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-03
Updated: 2017-04-03
Packaged: 2018-10-14 08:44:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10532934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kyanve/pseuds/kyanve
Summary: Lance decides to try to prove that he's just as capable of getting Blue to come get him as Keith has been at playing Space Fetch with Red.Blue may be less temperamental than Red, but Blue can also be a troll enough to make up for it.





	

It was what sort of passed for morning in the castle. Sleep schedules were starting to drift all over the place again, staggering out almost randomly; they were out in orbit around a random uninhabited planet, using a decent shell of meteors in a slightly further out orbit for cover to deal with internal repairs. 

Shiro drug onto the bridge yawning to find Pidge and Allura both watching one particular screen pulled up out of one of the terminals, intently focused and slightly perturbed; Keith trailed in not long after, stuck leaning over Shiro’s shoulder. 

It was an external monitor. Lance was in full armor, drifting along and using the thrusters on the armor to maintain a distance that was just far enough to be concerning, but close enough to make it back in an emergency; his arms were folded and he was glaring off into the middle distance vaguely toward the castle, jaw set in determination.

Shiro stared at this for a good minute, then turned to Allura. “Why is Lance outside the castle?”

The princess didn’t look up from the monitor. “I’m not quite sure. He had come onto the bridge to check something and seemed preoccupied; after a while, he suddenly announced that he wasn’t going to ‘be shown up’, ordered us not to go after him, and stormed out.” 

“He’d muttered something just before it about showing off.” Pidge was leaning her chin on one hand, narrating in tired boredom, with one pointed shift just enough to glance back at Keith. 

Keith blinked widely, awkward, then after a few seconds of staring at the monitor there was dawning recognition. “He’s trying to call Blue from outside the castle.”

Shiro closed his eyes, scrunching his face and pinching the bridge of his nose with a quiet noise of frustration, then tapped the intercom. “Lance? Are you alright?”

“I’M FINE. I’M ABSOLUTELY FINE.” There was no interruption in his glare.

“You don’t have a clue what you’re doing, do you.”

Lance’s attempt at focus did break into glaring more specifically toward the castle at Keith’s voice. “Keith?! What are you - I mean, great! Blue and I are going to show you who’s really got the best bond here!” 

Keith stared at the screen, long-suffering and still half awake.

“ALRIGHT BLUE, TIME TO GO!” There was silence. “Come on, Blue! Let’s show everyone what we’re made of!” Silence; Lance had to adjust position to stay within range of the castle. “BLUE YOU’RE A ROBOT LION YOU DON’T NEED BEAUTY SLEEP GET OUT HERE! Are you really going to let Red show you up?”

“That’s not how it works. At all.” Keith’s dry comment got a further moment of Shiro burying his face in his hands.

Allura put a hand over the panel, muting the intercom from picking up on the bridge. “Perhaps you should explain to him how before this goes on for too long?”

Keith shrugged. “I don’t think explaining it would help; it’s not really something someone else can tell you.” He tilted his head, watching Lance drift, occasional muted bits of Spanish and “GO, LION! BLUE LION AWAY!” as Lance tried to come up with some kind of command to no response. “He’ll get it eventually.”

Shiro muttered something faint under his breath, tired and despairing, but started and straightened up as if he hadn’t said anything when everyone on the bridge looked at him.

“I’m going to go get some of that Olcari tea.” Keith yawned and stretched, walking out. “I’ll be back in a bit.”

“Are you sure we should leave him like this?” Allura motioned to the screen.

“He’ll be fine. Blue probably won’t let anything that bad happen to him.” 

“THAT’S FINE! Blue is probably just waiting to have your full attention so we can show you who’s the better pilot. He’ll come get me when you come back.” 

Keith ignored the bait attempt, rolling his eyes with his back to the screen.

It was maybe ten minutes later when he came back with a hot mug and a tray with a couple of spares, setting it on the panel below the screen.

Lance was still drifting, occasionally visibly yelling and gesturing in the direction of the hangar; the intercom had been completely muted. Pidge pulled a mug over, watching in bored fascination. Shiro glanced up occasionally, mostly opting for ‘face buried in good hand’ as a reaction. Allura chewed her lip in vague concern, but did reach for one of the mugs distractedly.

Around a half hour later, the tea was mostly gone; Coran wandered onto the bridge, leaning around the gathered group to see what they were watching.

“Lance is trying to figure out how to call Blue”, Pidge offered, bored.

Lance was mostly curled up, eyes closed and frowning, occasionally broken up with a few more angry hand gestures and still-muted yelling.

Coran considered it for a while, finally shrugging. “Well, it can’t hurt for him to cultivate his connection, I suppose.”

“He’s doing it to compete with Keith and his game of playing fetch with Red by spacing himself.” Pidge rolled her eyes, even more unimpressed.

“…I wish him luck with that.” Coran turned on one heel and walked back out.

After another hour, Shiro and Pidge had been mostly distracted by Pidge pulling up a kludged light-panel chessboard she’d managed to code. Allura was sitting to the side of that panel, watching the game; Keith had found another mug of tea and was skimming over alien language primers on his terminal. Hunk came onto the bridge, scanned the room, then spotted the screen. “Lance is outside the castle?!” 

His brief alarm turned to confusion as everyone on the bridge tiredly looked up, clearly aware and unconcerned. “He’s trying to figure out how to call Blue. He’ll probably get it eventually if we leave him be…I give him two, maybe three more hours.” Keith gestured at the screen without looking. 

Hunk opened his mouth, staring at the screen. After a bit of deliberation, he walked over, tapping the panel. “…Lance? You okay out there?”

“I’M FINE! Blue is just… being shy or something.”

“…Do you want me to come get you?”

“NO! I can do this! I _will_ summon my lion!”

Hunk gave the screen a long, unimpressed stare.

“…Yeah. Just…call us when you’re ready to come in, okay?”

“I won’t _need_ you to come get me.” 

Hunk decided that was close enough, and closed the outgoing line. “Hey Pidge, you can monitor the vitals on his armor from here, right? We’ll know if he’s actually in trouble?”

“Yep.” She didn’t even look up from her chess game; Shiro had stepped aside, and was giving Allura pointers, teaching her chess. 

Hunk sighed, and left the bridge.

Lance’s occasional attempts at every weird old media reference he could think of for commands and summoning words became a periodic background noise punctuation; he managed to get through everything from “BLUE LION, I SUMMON THEE” to “ia ftaghn blue?” to “Accio BLUE LION!”. 

Keith rolled his eyes every time, and Shiro would occasionally sigh tiredly and shake his head. Pidge and Keith had a bored game going of tallying who could identify Lance’s references; Pidge was winning by a wide margin. 

After another two hours, Hunk had returned with a bag of roasted seeds, settling in to his terminal to watch Lance’s increasingly frustrated attempts. Ailura was getting the hang of chess, and Pidge was beginning to regret her life choices in teaching the princess. 

“Come on, Blue, I know you can hear me…this isn’t funny!”

“Check.” 

Pidge glared at the board, frowning; Allura had penned everything in pretty well.

“Blueeeee…here kitty kitty kitty kitty…nice kitty…good kitty…”

Keith snorted. Shiro shot him a warning look. He held up both hands empty, raised an eyebrow, and gestured at the screen; it wasn’t like he needed to say anything there. Shiro sighed, shaking his head and returning his attention to the chess game.

“Hey Blue, I’ll find a nice coat of polish if you come get me…” Lance’s sing song was starting to have a tiny edge of desperation. Keith looked up from his half-fruitless attempts at reading.

“Seriously, Blue, this isn’t funny. I’ve been out here way too long and I’m past hungry. Can you just come get me so I can eat?”

Allura started to move toward the panel; Keith raised his hand. Shiro narrowed his eyes, brows furrowed, and nodded, whispering a quiet “He’ll get it.”

She gave Shiro a dubious look, but settled back into her chair, watching the screen.

“Come on, Blue, I know you can hear me, you wouldn’t just leave me out here right? I mean, you know, we could get tracked down any time and it’d really suck to take on fighters or something like this…”

Shiro folded his hands, turning to sit facing the screen, watching intently; he was mouthing something under his hands, as if he could urge Lance the right way even though he knew there wasn’t much any of them could do to help.

“…Okay, Blue, this is starting to get a little freaky and I think some of the meteor belt is orbiting closer, which I knew it was going to do, I just didn’t expect to be out here when it did. PLEASE get your ass out here already?”

Allura frowned; she looked to Shiro, who was focused on the screen, and Keith, who’d leaned back with his hands laced behind his head. Pidge moved to sit closer to Hunk and mooch off what was still in his bowl.

A few of the smaller asteroids went past on the screen, Lance adjusting position frantically to try to account for trajectories. None of the ones that the castle would pass through were big enough to do damage to the ship, but Lance was a considerably smaller target. “BLUUUUEEE I DON’T THINK I CAN DO THIS MUCH LONGER…” There was a noticeable hint of panic; Allura stood from her chair.

“He’s almost got it.” Keith was unconcerned.

Hunk gave Keith a look of doubtful worry, half out of his chair, and shifted to Shiro as the one to watch for if he should go do a rescue or not. Shiro hadn’t moved yet, but had tensed.

One of them came close enough for Lance to need to pull out the armor’s shield, deflecting it off. “BLUEEEEEE I can’t do this I need you please-” A few more plinked off the shield, as the small shower got too dense to dodge, forcing Lance to ball up behind the shield, thrusters working to offset the risk of the impacts pushing him further from the castle. 

Before Lance’s panic moment had finished echoing over the comm, Shiro let out a slow breath, relaxing into his hands; there was a distant mechanical hum and an alert of a hangar door opening. 

Pidge and Hunk high fived each other, running out of the bridge. Allura wasn’t long after, Keith and Shiro trailing close behind her; Lance’s whoop of celebration could be heard through the closing doors. 

They made it to the hangar as Blue re-entered, crouching to let Lance disembark. He was puffed up proud as if he hadn’t been near panic not that long ago.

“I told you it’d work.”

Allura stepped forward ahead of the others. “So you did. You had me worried, but Keith and Shiro assured me you could do it.”

“Well, of course I-”. Lance paused. “Keith told you I could do it?” He looked from Allura to Keith; he was trying to sound dubious, but a little too much quiet awe came out.

“You were even on the low end of when I’d bet you’d figure it out.” Keith’s smile was still a little sharp edged.

“You were taking bets on how long I’d be out there.” The brief moment deflated.

“Shiro bet an hour and a half under Keith. Allura and I bet on Hunk needing to get you when the asteroid shower started. Hunk didn’t want to bet at first, then went for twenty minutes into the shower. I did beat Keith at recognizing all of your pop culture references when you were trying to think of commands, but he did better than I’d expected.” Pidge jerked a thumb behind her at Keith. “I’m kind of surprised you knew the Lesser Key of Solomon.”

“I don’t know if I’m weirdly flattered that Keith thought better of me than the rest of you, or insulted that you all thought I’d do worse than he did.” He gave all of them an offended glare, folding his arms. “Well, it doesn’t matter, because I did it.”

“It gets easier after you realize you need to trust them rather than control them.” Keith had gotten it out before Shiro could say anything, but Shiro accepted it with a faint shrug and an agreeing nod; it was more positive than Keith had usually been, and more helpful. Keith also suspected Blue had decided the whole thing was funny at some point. 

Lance was studying him. “I thought you'd only done it the once."

Allura was mouthing through something, looking over questioningly; Keith shook his head. “When we found Red. Spaced myself getting rid of a bunch of drones, and Red woke up to catch me.”

“The important part is that you’ve gotten better at trusting your lion.” Shiro had stepped between them, already seeing Lance’s posture starting to sour at the realization Keith had Red come to the rescue that long ago. Shiro was sure that Lance would need to be away from Keith to think about the implications that Keith had probably been doing more begging for help than he had, out loud or not. “It’ll be a big help.” He put his good hand on Lance’s shoulder, smiling and cutting off any other razzing before it could start. “Let’s go get something to eat, alright?”


End file.
